“I’ll try. Good night, Nora.”
“Good night.”
She quietly unlatched the door. She was no longer shocked to be entering the room where Lewis Upchurch slept—only shocked that it was now a sickroom.
The elderly chamber nurse looked up at her entrance and smiled. Mrs. Welch had a kind, wrinkled face framed by a floppy mobcap.
“How is he?” Nora whispered.
“The same, my dear. No better, no worse.”
Margaret picked up the tray. “May I bring you anything before I go to bed?”
“How kind you are to offer, but I have everything I need.”
“Good night, then.” She paused a moment, looking down at Lewis. She hated to see him so pale and still.
She recalled what she’d overheard Helen and Nathaniel discussing earlier when she’d delivered the tray. Nathaniel apparently thought Mr. Saxby might have challenged Lewis to a duel over Miss Lyons. But Miss Lyons had told her friend that Mr. Saxby had broken things off with her before the ball. Should she tell Nathaniel? She hated the thought of him falsely accusing Lewis’s friend.
After she returned the tray to the kitchen, Margaret went upstairs to the balcony. She hoped to see Mr. Upchurch, to offer her condolences, and perhaps mention what she knew about Mr. Saxby and Miss Lyons.
Instead, she stared at the North Star alone. Still, she somehow felt closer to Nathaniel on the balcony, empty though it was. There, she prayed for Lewis to live. She prayed for peace for Helen and Nathaniel. She prayed for safety for her family—her mother, sister, and brother.
She found herself remembering her father’s final hours. The Reverend Mr. Macy had been struck by a runaway coach-and-four when he’d stopped to help a fellow traveler on the road. The surgeon had been summoned, but there was little he could do for such severe internal injuries. Her father lingered a few hours, insensible, before slipping into eternity. Knowing him, he had been ready to meet his Maker. But she had not been ready to lose him.
“I miss you, Papa,” she whispered, blinking back tears anew.
A Briton knows...
That souls have no discriminating hue,
Alike important in their Maker’s view;
That none are free from blemish since the fall,
And love divine has paid one price for all.
—William Cowper, “Charity,” 1782
Chapter 27
Here it is, sir. That’s all of it.”
Nathaniel had asked Connor to go through all the pockets of Lewis’s many coats as well as his other belongings, looking for more clues for the identity of the man, or the woman, behind the duel. After morning prayers the next day, the valet delivered the things he’d found. Nathaniel thanked the young man and dismissed him.
Sitting at the small morning room table, Nathaniel fingered through the pile of club receipts, opera ticket stubs, and one of Lewis’s own calling cards bearing a “kiss”—the imprint of full lips in red rouge.
What was he to do with that? Take it about the county and ask all the women he met to pucker until he found a match? Useless.
He unfolded a piece of paper, a small sheet of stationery, and read.
Ye cruel, vain, blasted louse
Detested by all in my house
How dare ye set yer hands upon her
Such a sweet innocent girl
